Wright packs a wallop

NEW YORK -- Joe Torre fretted for Willie Randolph this week, and tried hard to get in touch with his former apprentice, just to see how he was doing.

Torre arrived at Shea Stadium to find that Randolph is doing just fine now.

Randolph's Mets won their third straight game in the opener of a four-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers last night, battering Torre's club, 8-4, to pull back to .500 on the season (26-26).

It was the first time in a month the struggling Mets had won as many as three straight. They last accomplished that modest feat in late April..

"A three-game winning streak -- we'll take that," Randolph said. "Back to .500, that's where you want to push from, to get away from, a little bit. Every year, you try to start from there and get, you know, five over, 10 over.

"We've got a ways to go, but it's nice to play well at home and get some rhythm going where we can play some good baseball."

David Wright powered a pair of two-run homers to provide most of the offense for the Mets, but the rest of the club did its part too, bunching hits nicely, taking advantage of shoddy Dodgers pitching and tacking on runs in the late innings in a manner they had not done over the previous week.

And the Mets' bullpen, which had performed so heroically in Wednesday's 12-inning win over Florida, was superb again, retiring 10 of the 12 batters in relief of starter Claudio Vargas (2-2).

Scott Schoeneweis, who pitched another 1 1/3 innings of perfect relief, earned special mention from the manager.

"Schoeneweis has been outstanding," Randolph said of the left-hander, who has allowed only one earned run in his last 17 innings.

Wright's two homers -- both of which came with two outs -- helped the Mets build a 6-0 lead through four innings.

The first one came in the third inning, after a struggling Brad Penny (5-6) walked Luis Castillo (3-for-4, with a double and two runs scored) with two outs. Wright's second homer came in the fourth, as the Mets took advantage of a couple Dodger miscues to score four more two-out runs.

The first error came when Vargas appeared to ground out harmlessly to short for the third out of the inning, but home plate umpire Bill Welke ruled catcher's interference against the Dodgers' Russell Martin and awarded Vargas first base.

"That's the first time I've gotten on base this year," Vargas said with a chuckle. "You've got to cheat sometimes."

Jose Reyes followed by extending his hitting streak to 14 games and his on-base streak to 29 with a hot smash down the right-field line.

Castillo followed with a double into left-center field and Dodgers left fielder Juan Pierre appeared to have a play at home on Vargas. But curiously, Pierre threw to third base instead, where no one was covering the bag and Reyes was sliding in safely.

The ball got away from third baseman Blake DeWitt and Reyes got up and scored easily. Two pitches later, Wright hit his 11th homer of the season, a shot to right-center, well beyond the 371-foot sign.

"He's a free swinger, and he's really dangerous," Torre said of Wright, who is hitting a whopping .579 (11-for-19) with four home runs in his career against Penny. "You can strike him out, but you have to get a count in your favor. And obviously, 2-0 is not that count. And that second home run, you saw, he hit it over the right-field fence. So he's very tough to defend against because he's so aggressive."

Vargas, who figures to be bounced from the starting rotation when Pedro Martinez returns to the team next week, said after the game that he had been feeling under the weather for a few days, which might explain why he seemed to lose his command so quickly in the fifth and sixth innings, allowing the Dodgers back in the game.

Jeff Kent led off the fifth with a mammoth home run beyond the visitors' bullpen in left field, and after giving up a single to James Loney and striking out Matt Kemp, Vargas surrendered a two-run shot into the Mets' bullpen to DeWitt to make it 6-3. The Dodgers added another run off Vargas in the sixth to pull to within 6-4.

But the Mets tacked on a couple of insurance runs in the seventh, stringing together a walk and three singles to put the game away.

"You get a six-run lead, your pitcher goes out there and throws strikes -- defensively we make plays for him and we continue to add on," Wright said, trying not to sound too satisfied. "We got some big two-out hits, some big two-out rallies. The bullpen came in and was phenomenal -- just an all-around great team win. We need to carry this momentum over and do it for an extended period of time."